Wireless communication networks may be used for numerous applications including tactical military and commercial applications. In an exemplary military application, military vehicles (e.g., tanks, trucks, airplanes, etc.) may include radios that act as nodes in the wireless communication network. One type of radio is a software defined radio (SDR). A software defined radio may be implemented in existing radios and the existing physical enclosures of these radios (i.e., the legacy radio form factors). As a result, the thermal limitations of the existing radio structure is imposed on the software defined radio. A digital radio, such as an SDR, may generate more power and heat than a legacy radio and a legacy radio enclosure may not have appropriate fans or fins to dissipate the heat and power. In addition, the radio temperature may be affected by the temperature of the external environment as well as the duty cycle of the radio (e.g., an SDR may transmit greater percentage of time than a legacy radio).
Thermal limitations of the physical enclosure of legacy radios can impact the ability of an SDR to operate in an ad hoc manner. In particular, thermal constraints of the radio enclosure may impact the ability of an SDR to function as an ad hoc relay (e.g., a cluster head or advantaged node). A wireless communication network may include advantaged nodes (e.g., on a ground platform, an airborne platform, a naval based platform, etc.) which have enhanced visibility or connectivity to other nodes in the network and therefore may have a larger number of one-hop neighbor nodes than a non-advantaged node. For example, a node may be selected as a relay node if the node can reach a particular destination or destinations in less hops. An advantaged node typically processes a large amount of traffic and therefore may generate more power and heat. When the thermal capacity of the ad hoc relay node is exceeded, the relay node must shut down which can disrupt the entire communication network. As a result, the performance of the network may be limited to the throughput of a single relay node.
There is a need, therefore, for a system and method to share (or shift) the thermal load of a relay node in a communication network. There is also a need for a system and method to assign a new relay node with additional thermal capacity and shift at least a portion of the thermal load from an original relay node. Accordingly, a system and method may be provided to select a new cluster head in response to the thermal load of an original cluster head and shift at least a portion of traffic to the new cluster head (i.e., other nodes in the network may direct/send traffic to the new cluster head) to prevent shut down of the original cluster head and disruption of the communication network.